


as far as I can tell

by aphrodite_mine



Category: Community (TV), Mad Men
Genre: Afterlife, Community: intoabar, Gen, Limbo, What Was I Thinking?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-09
Updated: 2013-06-09
Packaged: 2017-12-14 11:17:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/836299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphrodite_mine/pseuds/aphrodite_mine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being dead is the worst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	as far as I can tell

**Author's Note:**

> intoabar prompt: Britta Perry walks into a bar and meets... Lane Pryce!
> 
> @wakeupfine: how did this stupid meet-cute get so fucking depressing dot com

Being dead is the worst.

In fact, Britta is convinced that her death should make this at _least_ the second-darkest timeline. This has never been the Britta show, however, and after a few mopey months or weeks or maybe years, the surviving group members appear to be living an at least top three timeline.

Abed would tell her something Neilsen ratings and appealing to a key demographic, but the only people Britta can talk to now are dead. Dead and sucky and boring.

So boring.

Unlike life in the second-darkest-but-top-three-brightest timeline, things don’t move sequentially here. They don’t move _at all_. Sure, she can kind of float around and catch snippets of the “real world” but out of context, it all just feels like waking up in the middle of a _LOST_ episode while still high and hungry. She can float over to the billions upon billions of other unfortunately-for-their-timelines dead people, but most of them are just like her -- too invested in the other characters in their particular show to even bother trying to solve quantum physics equations or whatever dead people might normally do with all this free time.

Britta supposes she should be grateful or relieved that there is in fact life after death but as a former therapist she knows that the fear or desire for death can be one of the most powerful motivators. And now she doesn’t feel motivated to feel anything. Death after death would be less boring, after all.

There’s a lot about this limbo/heaven/hell/whatever situation that would be interesting under less dead circumstances. Like getting to talk to people from all over the world, and all _when_ the world -- like she’s her own special Inspector Spacepants. They all speak the same language, too, so that’s cool. Like, she’s now Britta 2.0: now with special floaty and translation powers. Of course, there isn’t _actually_ a reason to talk to anyone. It’s not like she can help them out, or use their life experiences to change the way she reacts to her own. But like some reflex that won’t quit, she finds herself floating around, chatting up the people with the coolest outfits.

(She’s stuck wearing a flannel shirt over her extra bikini, so its a good thing whatever this is doesn’t have a strict dress code.)

One month or week or maybe year, Britta manages to engage a pasty-looking fellow who is for business rather than pleasure. “Lane Pryce,” he says wearily, as if this is at least the fifth time he’s been interrupted in as many minutes. He still has an accent -- British -- despite being here for however long. (Britta’s still relatively new to being here, though if time doesn’t pass then she’s only as new as anyone else. That would blow Troy’s mind.)

“Britta Perry,” she answers, with what she imagines is comparative exuberance. 

He doesn’t offer a hand to shake hers, just tugs at his collar as if -- oh, okay, that is definitely a rope. There is no excuse for small talk any more: _how are you_ , _what have you been up to lately_ , _how’s the weather_ have a collective lack of meaning that catches Britta, sometimes, right in the chest. 

“Anything good on people TV today?” she asks instead, because she needs to ask _something_. All of the therapy bones in her buried body want to ask about the cause of death so obviously hanging (still) from his neck. Britta doesn’t believe in suicide shaming, and there’s about as much use in finding out _why_ and _how_ as there is in styling her hair.

“It seems that most parties I’ve managed to track are somewhere... _around_... rather than providing any sort of distraction or entertainment.” 

“Sucks,” Britta offers, shrugging. Maybe hers isn’t the darkest timeline after all.


End file.
